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Now Dragon wouldn’t be able to say sorry to Purple. He’d been mulling over it the past few weeks, talked about the argument with Sixty (not that Sixty even gave him the space to say no), even asked Flies about the whole situation. Yes. He’d stooped so low and desperate.
His worry came from different places, tangling each of his limbs and overlapping each other like yarn along a cork board—the ones in those murder mystery movies he’d watch with Purple screen-shared. Maybe she’d get eclipsed and Dragon wouldn’t ever know. She’d get eclipsed and those words would be the last words they ever shared. Or, she’d simply—and this was the most horrifying option—hate and leave him alone forever.
The massive crush Dragon had on Purple wasn’t a secret. Sixty had egged him on about it, shipped them together before Dragon made up his mind. Besides, they seemed like they were going somewhere, before all this shit with Ace distracted him and filled him with fire. Whenever he opened his mouth, smoke seemed to come out, and no matter how careful he was, he came out a total ass. His newfound bluntness worked when making videos, it worked when he was alone again at school, but if he couldn’t rein in his attitude, he’d lose all he had left. His friends.
That made his current predicament even more despairing, how much he had at risk back home. Wherever he was, his company consisted of total strangers and monsters every night. His friends down below in reality probably thought he was being an immature baby who resorted to ghosting them. Or maybe, and hopefully not, they were worried.
It wasn’t rare for Dragon to think about disappearing from everything. Even if he hadn’t meant it in this way. He meant it sometimes as a fantastical slip to another plane of existence, away from the hurt and responsibilities. Or something more finalizing, something he hadn’t talked about with anyone before. Not even Purple, not to say he hadn’t wanted to spill.
If push came to shove, he thought wryly, he always had his hammer to bash his head in. But only if all chances and plan of escape was ruled out. His affairs in the Anti-Night weren’t done yet.
Dragon lied on the floor outside. Blades of grass grazed his neck, poked his clothes and bare arms, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. His legs ached from the all the running. Throat raw from breathing. Eyes desperate to close but filled with images of the past and his recent encounter with the monsters. Sleep betrayed him, even if his body begged for it and something he'd usually do. His mind went dizzily everywhere it could, fogged by the grogginess of adrenaline keeping you awake. The same feeling of the all nighters he’d pulled with Purple.
Purple.
If she was going to hate him, could she at least pack her stuff and move out of his mind? He imagined his mind like an apartment. Any possible thought was fully entertained to the drops of it. His mind apartment would be full of cracks and have mysterious stains on carpets.
Soft footfall on the grass behind him. Before he even fully internalizes the noise, he shoots upright, grass painfully prodding his palm. All the rounds flash to his head. Subtle footsteps turned ferocious. Slamming. Punches. The suffocation of dying just to wake up once more in the same hell.
He whizzes his head around, looking behind him, and—oh. It’s just that kid. Brandon and a whole string of numbers. Standing before him with a face that looked… almost annoyed?
They’d talked to each other a few times now. Brandon tried to offer help whenever he could. Took up less space than the thin air outside. Hardly spoke, but Dragon couldn’t say he was shy or quiet either. More like Brandon only spoke when spoken to. Supposedly a good kid, even if you’d forget he even existed.
“… Brandon?” Dragon said. His voice came off a little raspy. Either from sleepiness or not having spoken since, honestly, two or so rounds ago. “My bad. You scared me. I’m a bit tired.” A little humiliating to admit he got scared. It’d be much easier to just feel braver, especially since landing his hammer demanded close combat. Blood-pumping on its own. Having to stare the entity center in their creepy eyes, their breath ghosting his face. For the entity, a missed stun meant an easy hit. An easy kill, in other circumstances.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” Brandon bites his inner cheek. Glances away for a beat. “I have to ask you something, and you have to promise not to make a joke about it.”
Dragon looked left and right like he expected a boulder to come out of the sky somewhere. Nobody asked him anything, especially not here. All conversation was on accident. “What’s up?”
“I’m hungry. There’s pasta in the cabinets this time, but I don’t know how to make it. I’ve seen you make it before. So, I thought that maybe…”
“I could make you some?”
“Yeah. Unless you’re too busy... looking at the sky." Dragon sensed judgement, but what else was he meant to do? "Or, you could just tell me how to. I can manage.” That almost sounded like he was expecting doubt he had the capabilites to make pasta.
“No, no,” Dragon said. He was so excruciatingly bored, having a fleeting purpose made him want to weep and pray at Brandon’s feet. “I can show you. It’ll be easier that way. Plus, it’s simple to make.”
“So first you boil some water,” Dragon said. He rummaged through the cabinets, emerging a metal pan. “In the real world, you usually do this with one of those kettle things, but all we got is a pan and bottled water. So.”
Brandon watched his movements like a surgeon observes the field in the operating room. Almost made Dragon doubt himself.
Dragon dumps water into the pan. Then he flicks on the stove, placing the pan over the burner.
“I had a stove that you have to use a lighter to use,” Brandon said out of nowhere, good thing, because boiling water this way would take a solid minute.
“What? How does that work?”
“It released some kind of gas, and you’re meant to light it and the flame would stay. It was kinda cool. The flame would always be blue. I never learned how to use it, though.” Oh. So that’s why he didn’t know how to make pasta.
“That would scare me too much to use, I can’t even light a candle. I guess I’d rely on my parents to make food.” Dragon stared at the pan, small bubbles of water within dappling the sides.
“I couldn’t really rely on them,” Brandon says almost sadly. Dragon hopes he’s not wandering into personal territory.
“What’d you eat then?” Dragon finds himself asking anyway.
“When we ran out of bread and cheese, nothing. I ate my friend’s food, though.”
The water was starting to boil.
Dragon crouches down to the cabinets. Finding the leagues of pasta within. A creepy thing about this place was how everything refurbished itself. Infinite bottled water and electricity and whatever food survived in a shelf. But the food was just that, food. They had nothing to make this pasta taste like anything but carbs. “Well that sounds uh… sucky of your parents.”
“Don’t say that. The Lord said never to condemn your parents.”
“You believe in God?” Dragon deflected while taking a pasta bag out of the drawers. Because hell no was he arguing against that. Leaving your kid to ‘not eat much’ and eat at friend’s houses was objectively pretty questionable.
“Yes.” Brandon slips out a silver cross necklace hiding beneath his collar. “I survive all those rounds because of how much I pray to Him. There’s not much else to do.” Or it was Dragon busting his ass to protect him since Brandon was the only one who could heal them all besides Prototype. He and God could both take credit though, sure. On second thought, Gunhound could take some as well.
“You didn’t seem like… the type,” Dragon says cautiously. He dumps some pasta into the pan. “Anyway, so once the water boils, put the pasta in. It basically cooks itself. You usually add spices now, but we got nothing.”
“I don’t seem like the type? What does that mean.”
“Nothing. Just pray for me too, it’d be loads of help. I’m basically on the frontlines.”
“I already do.” Brandon looked away, keeping his gaze firm on the pasta. He said it like it was something embarrassing.
“Aw,” Dragon says. In rounds, he fumbled all the time. So it wasn’t working well, but still. He didn’t think anyone would pray for him.
They both stared at the pasta, not having any more to stay.
“It’s not really ‘aw,’” Brandon said. “Praying kind of sucks to do. It’s really desperate. You have to prove you deserve good. I’m always scared my friends won’t feel my prayers. Or that I’m asking too much.”
“I thought we deserved it because we’re all God’s children. I don’t know. I’m agnostic.”
“My dad says agnostics are lazy fuckers. He hates anyone who isn’t a Sundowner, you don’t wanna hear what he has to say about Muslims and the Jewish. He’s kind of… opinionated. I don’t agree with him.”
Dragon blinked. He wanted to say ‘I thought swearing wasn’t allowed,’ but something else caught his attention. “What’s a Sundowner?”
Dragon expects Brandon to argue, somehow, but he doesn’t. “A sect of Christianity. It’s kind of recent and underground. Or… I think recent. What year is it?”
“You don’t know? I’m not sure either, but before I came here, it was 2012.”
“2012? God, that’s…”
“You come from a different time?” Dragon tilts his head. It’d be interesting to talk to someone from the future. There wasn’t much to warn someone from the past about, besides the fact the world was supposedly meant to end this December. Dragon didn’t believe it, Purple too. Sixty did, but he was probably just saying that to piss the ever reasonable Purple off.
“2009. My friends must be sixteen or seventeen now. That’s so old.”
“Hey, I’m… well, I’m supposed to turn sixteen next year. It’s not that old.” Supposed to. He couldn’t say it for sure. It could be 2040 for all they knew. “You’ll be sixteen eventually, too. You can’t be that much younger than me.”
Brandon leans on the counter, suddenly interested in the lazy bubbles of the pot.
“Unless?” Dragon eggs on. He hadn’t realized how nice conversation was after so long, he wanted it to keep going. “In reality, I mean. No idea how growing up works here.”
“I’m dead, you know.” Brandon leans into his crossed arms, peeking at Dragon over them.
What? Could that mean Dragon was dead too, if they were in the same place? Dragon didn’t remember dying. But, if he was dead, then…
“I died in 2009. Whatever happened between now and 2012… I don’t know. If we aren’t from different timelines. How stupid is that to say? I don’t know.” Brandon closes his eyes. “I don’t care what happens to me. I care what happens to all of them.”
Dragon’s confused for a second, then remembers something. “And If they can feel your prayers from here.”
Brandon laughs a little, airy and unpalatable. “Yeah. It’s the only thing I’ve been thinking about.”
“Rough. I can relate. But, er…” Dragon knows the difference is he has a possibility of seeing his friends again. If escaping takes a reasonable time or is even possible. (He’s acting on the assumption that he’s alive for his own comfort.) “Forget it. You can always talk to me. I’m bored all the time. Okay? Wait, shit—“
A toasty scent mingles in the air.
Dragon rushes over to the pasta. The boiling of the water fizzing between them had become a droning noise, so much so Dragon had forgotten about it. Especially with the recent revelation that Brandon had died before he got sent to this whole mess.
How fucked was that? Dead people deserved to rest. People as young as Brandon didn’t deserve to die. Sure, he wasn’t that much older, but it only now dawns on him how young being a teenager actually is. Ace. It reminds him of Ace. He needed to find Ace. Purple was one thing, but Ace only had so much time, not that Dragon knew at all. Purple might not even have much time herself, seeing Brandon dead but even younger than they all were right in front of him.
This must’ve been torture. Being brought back to life to all of this. And Dragon couldn’t even make him a simple, plain pasta.
Dragon succumbs to fate and puts the pot on a cold burner. The pasta molds itself inside the pan, mushy in some places and hard in the others. A little salvageable unless Brandon had standards. Dragon sure didn’t.
Brandon walks up to Dragon’s side. They stand in front of the burnt pasta, a mutual mourning. “It all doesn’t matter. Like the pasta.”
“What doesn’t matter?”
“I’m not even that hungry anymore, who cares if you burnt the pasta?” Brandon crosses his arms. “And eventually I’ll go back to being dead. It doesn’t matter if anyone talks to me. I’m trying to pretend I’m the same person, I…”
Dragon turns his head towards Brandon. This moment made him feel like he was towering over the kid, even if he was only an inch taller. (Not much hopes for a growth spurt.) “What?”
“I know God isn’t real. If he was, I wouldn’t be here. They lied to me. My dad lied. They all lied.”
“Then why did you… pray? Did you actually pray?”
Brandon’s fists clench weak inside his elbows. His head downcast. Dragon tries to catch his gaze again and realized why he’s hiding it—tears well up on the corners of his eyes. “I did. I’ve killed myself for nothing.”
Literally killed himself? Or metaphorically? It seemed obvious to assume. But it just… Dragon couldn’t string together a thought. Truly. What could you say to that? What words could make it feel better?
Dragon opts for action. It’s what he usually does when someone’s upset. Like all those late nights where he’d listen to Purple vent, about her dead mother or whatever had been bothering her.
He settles his arm around Brandon’s shoulder, carefully, leaving enough room for Brandon to slip out. Brandon is a warm presence at his side, unexpected from the cold of the dead, like holding life itself. Dragon hadn’t hugged anyone in so long. Even if this counted as one. Physical affection had always been something he was apathetic to. But when Purple said she loved it, that had been okay. And when Brandon was crying, it had been necessary. Is this what being an older brother would’ve felt like? Dragon was an only child.
Brandon stiffened inside his arm, unnaturally frozen as if trying not to move was deliberate. Dragon nearly worried he was uncomfortable—but then he pressed his face into Dragon’s chest, throwing his arms around him.
Dragon couldn’t say he had ever felt more useful. Why was he feeling so much towards a complete stranger? He didn’t know this kid at all, yet…
He wrapped his free arm around Brandon’s back. What could Brandon be thinking right now? Did this actually make him feel better? Did he feel a little awkward right now, too? Was he just… playing along? Somehow, it was too quiet to be anything more than in the moment. If only he could feel this more. He’d been so stuck in his head recently.
He rubbed Brandon’s back cautiously, scared that might get him yelled at. His hand rode an arc around Brandon’s back, like a slow swaying boat, going up his spine and his neck to the back of his head. Brandon breathes against him, short inhales and exhales, chest rising and deflating, and finds himself breathing along.
“We can try to make the pasta again,” Dragon whispers like a secret between them. “You can make it to see if you remember what I taught you. Or… I can make it. I don’t mind.”
Brandon doesn’t respond for now. Only tightens his hold a little.